Background

mobile.de was founded in 1996 and, with more than 64 million visits per month, is the most visited marketplace for the buying and selling of vehicles in Germany (IVW 11/2011). A selection of more than 1.4 million vehicles is currently on offer. This means that mobile.de has the biggest offer of cars, utility vehicles and motorcycles in Germany (Source: CAR-Institut). Users include private customers, as well as more than 35,000 registered vehicle traders. The automobile marketplace offers its services in a total of nine languages. mobile.de belongs to mobile.international GmbH, which, as well as the German market leader, also operates marketplaces in Italy, France, Poland and Romania. The company employs more than 140 members of staff at the Dreilinden/Berlin location and is a subsidiary of eBay International AG.

The current marketing campaign's core idea “Life is too short for just a few cars” is also relevant for respective HR measures. However only the claim “Welcher ist dein Nächster?” (“Which one is your next?”) is used in the company’s communication. And this year mobile.de is launching a broad-based, integrated marketing campaign for business and private customers in print, online and on TV (LINK).

Aim:

People should be made aware of the job benefits of mobile.de (international and dynamic working environment, the opportunity to work for a market leader and 100% eBay subsidiary and assume responsibility) and mobile.de should be anchored as one of the top e-commerce employers in the minds of the target group.

The success of your communication concept is measured by the quantity, and above all, the qualifications of applicants and new recruits in all departments of mobile.de, from technology (especially mobile development) to finance, marketing, and down to product management.

Task Definition

We are not looking for a classic personnel campaign with HR image and job advertisements, nor a classic marketing campaign (like promotions). Instead we are searching for PR-effective communication measures and ideas, such as:

You should emphasize the strengths of an established market leader associated with an international big corporation, who, as an employer, combines the benefits both of a start-up and a medium-sized business (manageable dimensions, security, international career opportunities).

Target Group

Your idea should appeal to men and women from all over the world, who wish to work in Germany

We are looking for potential employees for all typical departments of the online business: technology, finance, marketing, dealer sales, international business, product etc. (LINK)

The potential candidates should be savvy when it comes to e-commerce and want to work in an online company offering diverse development opportunities within an international enterprise.

Ideally the new employees should be enthusiastic about automotive topics (i.e. they should have “gasoline running through their veins!”)

Tonality

Aspirational and innovative (exclusively online company)

Ambitious (market leader)

Confident (trend and agenda-setting through experience and expertise)

German (typical medium-sized German company) yet at the same time international (100% eBay subsidiary)

Mandatory requirements

Your communication measures must reflect the core idea of the company “Life is too short for just a few cars”. But, it is important that only the claim “Welcher ist dein Nächster?” (“Which one is your next one?”) is used for the communication.

Your communication idea should fit in with the current claim “Welcher ist dein Nächster?” (“Which one is your next one?”), but, above all, it should sustainably consolidate mobile.de as a “Great Place to Work” in people’s minds.

mobile.de has a strong branding and strong campaigns. So we are neither looking for new design, nor new classic (HR) campaign ideas for this project, but only for PR-effective HR communication measures!

Your HR communication measures should appeal to people from all over the world, but should only apply to the German market.

It should be possible to realize your HR communication measures within a reasonable cost framework.

In this contest we are only looking for the IDEA: So an in-depth text concept for a fantastic PR stunt has more chances of being bought and realized than a modest, well thought-out idea that is elaborately depicted.

The following questions will help you to describe your idea and will help the communication experts from mobile.de to understand your idea.?

Which problem does your idea solve (e.g.: people tend to assume that mobile.de is a mobile communications service provider instead of Germany's largest market place for vehicles)??

PR ideas
The focus should be on generating attention by creating an interesting story for people and press to write about. (story telling)
Attention for this campaign should be generated trough e.g. a great event, an awesome stunt or a guerrilla campaign, not trough a poster that shows "mobile.de is looking for a office manager"

We had a great and constructive halftime feedback with the leading communication experts of mobile.de and their creative agency, Achtung.
Many of your ideas contain great sparks and have great potential. What you could (and should) consider to make your ideas even better, practicle and usefull for the task tey should accomplish:

Think of targeting your target group

Many of your ideas will provoke huge attention. But will it really be seen by the targeted target group? If not, think about how you could specify your idea to hit the target group where they really are, where they work, where they travel and where they meet.

Possible (HR)events the target group will attend are:
 Dmexco
 Mobile Monday (Berlin, hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich etc.)
 Mobile Business Conference
 Internet world
 but we are sure you can think of even other venues where the target group can be met.

Think e-commerce

Most of you have great ideas to set the automotive theme in scene. Cars are one important subject of mobile.de  but working at mobile.de means at the first instance to work for an e-commerce company. How could this aspect be put even more into the foreground?

Think cross-channel

Derriving from 1. and 2. comes the question: How could the ideas possibly work across different channels. How could e.g. a great thing that happens on the street or on an university campus be told further on the internet?

Think longterm

A HR-campaign should not be a one-hit-wonder  it should work and develop over a certain period of time. Only like this it will build a consistand HR image for the company in the heads of their target group.

And 5. A little thank you from us here at jovoto for using the evalution questions!
It makes a big difference to pick out the most important information and include it in the answers to the questions, so make sure you arnt just lumping this vital info with the rest of your description! Thanks :-)

I meant CV, but I wanted to sound... like an educated person. I browsed their website, but couldn't find the Jobs/Career Opportunities page.
I was wondering what kind of people they hire, what positions they have. I "watched" their "mobile.de as employer" videos, but I don't speak German and couldn't understand anything. Well, I guess I don't have the minimum requirements (speak their language) for any job they might have, do I?

all good questions...perhaps you can use this disadvantage in a new entry? How does the average qualified person respond to the job board and am I eligible? They do mention they want people from around the world but here we see it is not so easy to apply. How can you imagine the ease of application process? I see a new entry idea forming.. :)

Hi Borhes,
The questions should help to specify your idea as short and precisely as possible, therefore the numbers of characters is limited. However in the idea description above, you can use a much characters as you want to.

The trash button is only effective within the first 24 hours of uploading a slide...you can put an "OLD" slide with arrows going right and "NEW" slide with arrows going left, thats what most of us do :) at times it's very interesting to see the progression of an entry from oldest to newest. I think it's kind of a 'time stamp' though could be implemented a little better using real time stamps..

How sad.. There's almost no idea in top 20, which satisfies briefing. Bad that people here spend all their time to write a critical, very "fair" comments on other's ideas, scanning number of rates instead of working on their own propose.
Almost every idea here is just classic guerilla with stickers, slogans on the cars, bike, walls etc. What about target? Storytelling? Buzz in media? International spreading...
True is that usually in top we don't see the best ideas, we see the most active and crafty users. Sad.

Hey Kristina! Don't be sad! The last one AND the most important one who votes for the ideas is the client. And only HIS feedback is important! This is my opinion. So - be happy! :)))) Lovely greetings from germany!!!

I'm not that sad) Absolutely agree with you, Ramona! Only his, true.
It was just a thoughts. Today I watched every idea in the contest, found only a few suitable, and you know what - none of them in top 20. Only a bunch of blah-blah comments..

You are right.
To be honest, I feel guilty. My submission doesn't respect the briefing, but it's not in the top 20 as well. I took a look at your idea again. Yes, I found it interesting in the first place. There were some comments somewhere (can't remember where) and someone said that LinkedIn was not so popular in Germany.
Anyway, good luck!

To FlorinDia : you don't have to be guilty since you didn't do nothing wrong...)
To boscutti : yeah! Thank you. About rating.. In general I like this new system. It's all about jovotovians behavior, dirty tricks and hypocrisy.